The Construction Site has a very mobile work force. Project Engineers, Superintendents and Labor foremen are practically never at the Field Office but at the work site making sure that the work gets done within budget and schedule, unfortunately in the modern construction era, this is almost impossible, there is an enormous amount of information that has to be sent back on a daily basis to Construction Headquarters like for example:
- Daily reports
- QA/QC Reports
- Time Sheets
- Production Reports
- Etc.
Depending on the size of the Job, must of this Information is collected by the Superintendent, or the foremen and then pass it along to a Project Engineer, QA/QC Engineer or Cost Engineer to be interpreted, reformatted and transmitted back to headquarters in electronic format in the best case scenario, or via emails, faxes, etc.
This way of doing business is very ineffective, here some of the reasons:
- Productivity Loss
- Multiple Data Entry Scenarios
- Higher Costs
In order to reduce cost, improve productivity and have a competitive edge, contractors have to embrace mobile technologies, and introduce efficiencies in the Work place based on them.
There are few Software vendors in the Industry that have introduced Applications for Mobile Devices like Palm, Windows Mobile, Blackberry and others that capture data like quantities, time cards, daily reports and other and wirelessly sends it back to Headquarters, others allow GPS tracking, or scanning, and the list goes on. Also mobile devices have different form factors, not just mobile phones, but also tablet PCs and probably new devices like the iPhone and the iPad that soon will have Application written for them
Introducing these technologies in the Field Office and going Mobile in my opinion is the way to go.
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